The New Economy

A couple of curious things happened this week. I got two messages from employment agencies wanting to talk to me, and I got two messages from companies wanting to advertise on my blog. Not bad for not having lifted a finger in either direction.

I have been looking on Dice.com for a programming job, and perhaps my activity brought my resume to the top of the churn pile, because I had not applied for a job with either of agencies that contacted me. I doubt anything will come of it, but I will try to remain neutral. You never know, something could fall out of the sky at any time. One was for a job in Austin, Texas with AMD, and the other was in Seattle, Washington with Meteorcomm.

Meteorcomm builds a very interesting, perhaps unique, radio communications system. They bounce their radio signals off of the ionization trails left when micrometeorites hit the atmosphere and are incinerated. We're not talking about meteorites, the ones you sometimes see flashing across the night sky. These are like grains of sand and there is a constant influx of them. They were a sometimes competitor to the GOES system for data collection operations. GOES is only open to government agencies, only operates in one direction, and requires a big satellite dish to receive the signals. Meteorcomm's system works in both directions, doesn't require a satellite or a satellite dish, and is open to anyone. Getting a job at Meteorcomm would be very cool.

Then there were the advertisters. One was from ASPEX. The make a personal scanning electron microscope (PSEM) and they wanted to put up something about it. The letter implied that there might be some money in it, but I didn't care. This product was just too cool! A scanning electron microscope that sits on a table! Wow! It does cost upwards of $80,000, which kind of put a damper on my enthusiasm.

They have a video demonstrating the machine, and in this video the machine is sitting on what looks like the box it came in, and the box is wobbling! Who are these clowns? They have an $80 thousand dollar machine sitting on top of a cardboard box, and it's wobbling! Criminently. Have marketing standards slipped that far?

The other advertiser was Obnoxious, oops, sorry, Annoying Orange. They are offering me $100 a month to put a banner at the top of my blog. $100 isn't going to cover the rent, but it would keep me in coffee beans. But if the banner is annoying as some of the ones I've seen out there on the web, I don't think I would do it. But it does make me wonder how much Google would pay with their scheme. Especially since I don't expect to land a job anytime soon, and I am not quite ready to start smuggling.